Longtime television personality Geraldo Rivera said former President Trump made him “dump him,” in reference to their falling out in late 2020 after Rivera said he would not support the former president’s election fraud theories.
“I feel awful that he made me dump him,” Rivera said in an interview with The New York Times.
Rivera detailed his last interactions with Trump, which took place just 10 days after the 2020 election. Rivera claimed he received a call from the former president asking if he had heard of Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine company Trump alleged helped overturn the 2020 presidential election result in President Biden’s favor.
Rivera claimed Trump asked him to look into the election allegations and call him back. After hearing from sources who said Dominion was not involved in election interference, Rivera said he called Trump back Nov. 16 to share his findings, but Trump did not take the call and the two have not spoken since.
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Rivera, once widely known as an ally of Trump, grew increasingly critical of the former president and his alleged efforts to overturn the election since late 2020.
In the weeks following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Rivera called for Trump to be impeached, accusing the president of fueling the violent riot; and last fall, the TV personality said he could never support Trump, calling the former president’s 2020 election claims “shameful.”
Speaking with The New York Times, Rivera called Trump “crazy, really crazy,” and “underrated, over-prosecuted and persecuted.”
In June, Rivera was fired from “The Five,” Fox’s leading daytime show, where Rivera regularly appeared and engaged in debate with its more conservative or pro-Trump members. While the network said he could make documentaries, Rivera said he decided to quit.
When The New York Times asked him about Fox, Rivera said, “I cashed their checks for 22 years.”
The Hill reached out to Trump’s spokespeople for comment.